Resurrection of Shadow - Part I
by Deepstrike
Summary: Two of the Shin Kidousenki gundam pilots die at the hands of an unknown new model mobile suit and Duo feels that he is responsible for their deaths.


Disclaimer: None of the material associated with Shin Kidousenki and Shin Kidousenki: Endless Waltz Gundam Wing is owned in any part by the author. All material is the sole property and trademarks of Sotsu, Sunrise, Bandai and all associated corporations unless otherwise stated to be under the creation of the author. This fanfiction was created without permission of the stated corporations and agencies for the sole purpose of entertainment and should not be sold for profit in any way, shape or form. Deepstrike does not own Shin Kidousenki Gundam Wing although he wished he did.  
  
This is my first attempt at writing a really good New Mobile Report fanfic, so don't make any nasty comments (yet). Lack of dialogue in the first couple of parts, you might be thinking, was an error on my part. The pilots, however, don't really have time to talk on the battlefield when they're whooping ass on the battlefield. You might think that my approach might be a bit on the higher end of the staff when it comes to a person's first fanfic, but I was inspired right away to write this. My inspiration came to me when I heard the track on the Endless Waltz soundtrack titled 'Heero's Dream'. With its ever-changing mood and dramatic presence, it provided the perfect backdrop for a dark story. My only thanx go out to the one and only Michael Haase for copying the soundtrack, Emmanuel Ndenguebi for the original, and my very own Kate 'Umi' Knott for a buttload of ideas. Where would this work be without you? As Duo Maxwell replies, "Burning in hell."  
  
Resurrection of Shadow  
  
By: Deepstrike  
  
"I hope they realized I was existent when they made that proclamation of war because it's gonna be a living hell trying to beat me!"  
  
Duo Maxwell was being his usual self on the battlefield when he was kicking some serious ass. He had on a smug grin and was happy and content in the cramped cockpit of his new model Gundam. The dim lights in the cockpit flashed shadows across his sleek, muscular face as his eyes adjusted to the multitude of data glaring at him from the screens surrounding him. The shadows were now accompanied by the familiar red hue of the display notifying Duo that some enemy jackass was riding his tail. He didn't even want to worry about that guy following him, so he shifted hard left and turned to face the mobile suit, the surrounding explosions nearly incinerating the purple hue of his eyes.  
  
"Old model Taurus! I didn't even know these things were still around. Oh well, guess MR's big cheese blew his cash at the mall on some nonfunctional microwave. Speaking of microwaves…"  
  
His brown eyes flashed in the dark as he thumbed the knob on the left joystick to bring his two buster shields online. The flanges retracted from beneath the pods and the comforting thrum of the blades coming to life from between the fixed slashers emanated within Duo's brain.   
  
"Too bad you're gonna be cookin' in your own god-damned blood!" Duo screamed as he quickly depressed the stud for firing the shields. Fingers flying across the planar orb buster controls, the Taurus didn't even have time to react before the spinning conflagration of the shields hit him full on in the side of his torso. Billowing explosions ripped from the suit as Duo silently complimented his reflexes and his reaction time at controlling three things at once. He noticed they were battling over civilian ground as the flash from the explosion revealed city streets and smoldering houses. Recalling the shields, he kept the blades online to deal a little destruction to the oncoming Serpents coming from 1349. He recalled from the data he retrieved from Hell Custom that Serpents, while strong in weaponry, were suckers for speed and maneuverability. And that's exactly what he had.   
  
Fingering the control for the active cloak on his left console, Duo heard a burst of static from his comm grill that instantly faded to silence as the cloak came online. Calling up the GAI's memory, he figured that it was Quatre trying to tell him something. Whatever it was, he would just have to wait until those Serpents were slag. Looking up toward the sky, he slammed his fist down hard against the sturm booster console door and toggled the activation switch as soon as it opened, rocketing Deathscythe forward at blinding speed, his suit traveling even faster than his dark, ground-hugging shadow could keep up with.  
  
  
"Why isn't Duo responding? I could have sworn I had sent out a two-speed comm trans. I'll try again."  
  
The silence from Quatre's speaker was haunting, as if Duo had somehow met his match during combat. No, that wasn't like him. Quatre thought otherwise, but he was instantly reassured by the great fireballs in the sky and the winged form of Deathscythe emerging from them, leaving eddies in the fire behind him and the raining of blood and melted alloy upon the ground below. Those green blades coming from Deathscythe's wrists were just too much. They reminded Quatre of some computer game he had played as a child, but that was the past. To dwell in the past meant to die in the present, so he charged his shotels and had visions of getting a tan with Trowa as he rushed onto the battlefield.   
  
The deadly Gatlings of the Serpents were deathly bright even against the flare guards installed within Sandrock's screens, but Quatre paid no mind to them through his thick goggles. He flicked the toggle for thrust and sped forth with his shotels at his sides and performed his usual maneuver of flying forth and cutting down the mobile suits straight through the waist and, if the suits were clustered together too much, would hack off heads with his follow-through. Quatre penetrated into the back of his mind, despite the shuddering of his Gundam amidst the blazing of the Serpents' guns and wondered why he was even on the battlefield at this time. He hoped that Dorothy was OK.   
  
  
"You doin' OK out there, sweetie?"  
  
"Yeah, just fine if a busted rifle means OK."  
  
A husky laugh emanated from Hilde's speaker, followed by a response, shaky with laughter.   
  
"That's just great. I'll FedEx you a paintball gun. Oops, didn't mean to let out my present."  
  
Duo finished off his transmission with a "merry Christmas" and continued to beat back the oncoming Serpents, Hilde's high-pitched, cheery laughter cut off by the tactical update coming in from Deathscythe's GAI. 'He always finds the worst fucking times to do this' Duo thought as Hilde's laughter was still ringing joyously in his brain. His TAIC informed him that the number of Serpents was dwindling and reinforcements were not coming for a radius of about 100 miles. Good, that meant he could give Hilde her much appreciated foot massage in less than an hour. Maybe he could even give her a massage elsewhere. His fantasies were abruptly shattered, though, when the flat, emotionless voice of Heero invaded his comm and grieved to him about the occurrences happening back home.   
  
"We were caught off of our guard and were decimated by those new Aquarian mobile suits. Chang was pretty much flying solo out there because of field mods on our Gundams and-"  
  
"And what?"  
  
"He didn't return. Howard never wrote him in, so we assumed he was lost to the force of the field. God rest his soul."  
  
"No! Chang couldn't have died! I'll…I'll kill the son of a bitch that did that!"  
  
Duo abruptly cut Heero off and switched to a burst trans mode so that he could communicate with Hilde.  
  
"Come on Hilde. Something's wrong with Chang and his situation back at HQ."  
  
An explosion followed by flaring bits of ash and mobile suit armor rocked his Gundam from behind and almost knocked it over. The gyros whirred behind the cockpit chair, deep within Deathscythe's innards and stabilized the lanky suit. Two Serpents, appearing to have materialized from nowhere, parachuted down from the occasionally flashing sky with scorch marks on their legs and it seemed that they had tried to bomb the two Colony Rebel suits and hit their own instead. Duo played host to their mistakes and flew upward, activating his disruption field in tandem with the active cloak as he arched his joystick backward for a good boost toward his next victims.  
  
  
The pilots were silently congratulating themselves on the destruction of yet another non-MR aligned civilian town. Orders predetermined within that mile-thick textbook back at the academy stated that all post-battle information be given after tactical standstill.   
  
"Recon-6, this is Mercenary Spearhead, I'm uplinking all PTAD into the mainframe analysis at HQ. Stand by for first-phase download."  
  
There was a pause as the moustached pilot relayed his data from his console back to the cruiser waiting at a predetermined drop point, their HQ. He then severed his connection and listened intently in the silence of the halted battleground.  
  
"D'you hear anything, Jenks? I coulda sworn a pair of legs just moseyed by. C'mon, let's take a walk in the woods."  
  
"I don't know about this, Cruzon."  
  
"Just trust me. It's not like a Gundam's gonna come out and kill us in the middle of nowhere.  
  
The two Serpents clambered into the haunting darkness of the foliage before them, their floodlights blazing in the darkness. Small animals scattered as each step quaked the ground beneath them, the gargantuan feet of the suits hissing with steam bleedoff after each up of their step. A bunch of trees rustled to their left and startled Jenks. His rifle locked and ready to fire, he whipped around to only face darkness and the bewildered eyes of a pack of raccoons.  
  
"Oh, heh heh, pardon me."said Jenks as he pulled his rifle by his side and continued to crash through the underbrush alongside his buddy. Suddenly, a blinking red arrow followed by a bit of data beneath it flashed on both of their screens.  
  
"Where?"  
  
"Above us!"  
  
They lifted their heads just in time to catch a view of a small spherical object plummeting to the ground. It exploded in a bright storm of luminescence and temporarily blinded the pilots. Cruzon was the first to regain his vision and when he did, he wished he hadn't. The ominous form of Deathscythe was gliding toward them from its sanctum in the sky like a demon straight out of hell. His downward thrust emanating from the verniers half-hidden on his back, it threw up a great cloud of dust and left a large ellipse embedded in the ground.   
  
"Aaaaaaah, it's a Gundam!" he screamed in shock.  
  
"Well don't just stand there, damn it, shoot it down!" replied Jenks.  
  
  
The faceplates on the two suits flashed a teal hue as they both pulled tube launchers from their immense back storage packs. Jenks had his launcher already loaded and was about to fire when Duo shot forth, braked swiftly with his lateral sturm jet, and gave it a swift kick in the neck with his right foot's boot spike. The impact halfway severed the neck, causing a shower of sparks to erupt from the suit's torsion joints. Quick thinking saved Duo as the faceplate of the Serpent he kicked flickered out. Hilde was on it right away, whipping out her beam saber and slashing it vertically from chin to groin. Her doubling technique was no failure, as shown by her Taurus being instantly lit up by the explosion. Hilde shielded her eyes and was a little dazed from the close impact, but the suit comp showed that all systems were functioning nominally.   
  
"Good shot, Red 2."muttered Duo.   
  
"The Force is strong with this one." Hilde replied in a seductive voice that caught Duo off guard like a bag of Twinkies.  
  
"Yeah, the Force I apply to you at around 12:30 every night…"  
  
"Shut up, you pervert!"  
  
"Sorry, I couldn't help it!"  
  
Duo's cockpit was flooded with the laughter of the two as he put his port maneuvering thruster on continuous fire and spun around like that mixer Hilde used in their cramped kitchen back on L2. The sight would have made any normal human sick, but Duo was handling it like a riding mower, making easy adjustments to his yaw as he brought in the suit's starboard wing for the kill. Cruzon's Serpent momentarily staggered backward as he managed to fire off a shot from his launcher, nearly knocking Deathscythe over. Duo groaned as he kicked the gyros back into gear and whirled Deathscythe around to face the Serpent. He analyzed the comm signature of the enemy suit and found it to be a crappy GC system. He immediately tapped into the other pilot's comm.  
  
"How dare you shoot me! Well, congratulations Mr. Serpent. You're now the proud winner of the Maxwell's ClearingHouse Sweepstakes. Your prize, a one way ticket STRAIGHT TO HELL!"   
  
Cruzon was as fearful as any other pilot would be when a Gundam's operator directly threatened him. Beads of sweat trickled down his face as he tried to knock off another missile load from his canister, but he was too late. He saw it coming and now he was to meet his doom. The black colored Gundam's eyes flashed a bright green and left before its face green mist as it spun around again, only this time it wasn't Duo's intent to slice the Serpent in half. Cruzon ran from the hovering effigy of evil, making good time with his thrusters.   
  
"Leaving so soon?" Duo called out to him with a sly accent on his voice.  
  
Barely noticeable to an untrained eye, Deathscythe's left shoulder pod extended to reveal the cavernous maw of a countermeasure firing tube. A withering spray of green fire emanated from the Gundam's head as it fired its pulses to disable the Serpent. The blast caught the suit straight in the primary system trunk and cut all power off from the cockpit. Duo then launched his weapons, letting them free-fall until they took up an orbit around the helpless Serpent.  
  
  
All screens were dark. Cruzon shifted his joysticks but there was no response. It was black as pitch in the cramped cockpit and he felt the consoles starting to build up condensation from his own sweat. Alone, trapped, helpless and facing death from a Gundam who had just returned from the underworld, he was pale with fear and petrified shock. Tears streamed down his face as he had visions of his buddies at the academy and the loving family he had left behind on L4 so many years ago when he had joined the cause of the Mariemaia Army. Then, when his fright was at its peak, there was a blinding light that immediately flashed his cockpit and revealed everything for a moment, but then dissipated into streaks of lightning. The azure force was playing over his consoles and jumped to his joysticks in a split-second, making Cruzon's hair stand on end and instilling a series of sharp, painful jabs to his ribcage. He sat straight up from his slumped position in his chair and screamed, a loud, forceful scream that rang in the night and made for his last sound. He could feel the flames well up from beneath him…  
  
  
"Estimate that to be around 36Ks per mine. That's gonna leave one helluva mark!" Duo sarcastically exclaimed. His comm was open and Duo waited a brief moment before he heard what he wanted to hear, the scream of the pilot before he went into his final throes of agony. He reveled in hearing a person die and had a program set up within the GAI that automatically triggered a tap-in to a targeted suit's comm signature so that Duo could make this happen. Another blast hit Duo from behind and from the muffled squeal over his comm, he deduced that it had hit Hilde too. What the hell was going on here? Delusions of a new suit flooded Duo's mind, but he pressed on unfazed by the events taking place. Hilde's frantic chattering as his Gundam trundled off of the battlefield broke the silence.   
  
"What the hell was that?" Hilde uttered.  
  
"Don't know. From the sound of it I'd say that Quatre's having a bit of fun with his missiles. I wouldn't blame-"  
  
"Look right there. I'm uploading the sweep data. Take a look at that fragment." Hilde sounded strangely frightened.  
  
  
"Are we all having a good time? As if I needed to ask."  
  
Quatre had just finished sending a tight-beam trans to the entire Maguanac Corps as they trounced the opposition with their silverware drawer of destruction. Their blades were seemingly forks and knives from a distance, gleaming with the sparks of the clash of metals and the crimson of the blood long since dried from another victim. Abdul started laughing about something over Quatre's comm and Rashid's suit channel was stuffed with the clash of blade against blade and his occasional battle yell as he took a large, overexaggerated swing at a poorly defended suit. Trying to control Sandrock and keep his Arabian fellows at good footing with the Serpents at the same time, he reached quickly over to his overhead console and toggled the blue channel selector switch for voice recognition.  
  
"Take me to channel 'abduldaman17-G60'." Quatre paused. "Geez, what a name for a comm signature! He could have just taken the normal serial. Oh well, hams will be hams."  
  
He continued his descent into the airwaves and finally made trans pickup into Abdul's suit. He caught the jerk mid-syllable.  
  
"So the girl jumps out of her window butt-naked, running down the street yelling 'Freeshow! Freeshow!'  
  
A shower of laughter emanated from the comm grill as Quatre heard the remains of a joke he had heard a long time ago but the Corps had not heard until now. He paid no mind to it, pausing to briefly snicker and continued his press on the enemy. Just like a game, he thought. Move them into a corner and they'll have no way out. He smiled a bit as he thought of how fast they would end this battle and his happiness was abruptly shattered when the force of a tidal wave hit Sandrock head on and whirled him around. The blast knocked the suit to the ground and when he tried to get up, he succeeded for only a fraction of a second. Four small mobile suits, no larger than an Aries, swarmed from behind a half-molten bunker and pinned the Gundam down with tremendous strength. Quatre was temporarily struck flabbergasted when this happened, but he quickly regained his composure.   
  
"What the hell? Patrol suits aren't this powerful. Rashid, get me TAD on those suits. There's something screwy goin' on around here and I want it to stop this instant. We have to finish this fight and I'm not gonna let some shitless PT suits knock the crap out of me!"  
  
In a last-ditch effort to get the suits off of his, he opened up his missile tubes and didn't even hesitate when he hit the fire toggle. He didn't even have to aim. The radius was enough to take them out. He staggered up from the wreckage of the surrounding encampment and surveyed the area. Sweep registered nothing.   
  
"Who were those guys? Were they just anti-factionists or something?"  
  
"Probably just strays from an enemy convoy. They feel they have to go out in a blaze of glory." Rashid answered. "I've seen enough for one day on this field. It's half-cleared anyway, and the Sweepers are doing a nice job of mop-up. I'm retiring for the night. What about you, Master Quatre?"  
  
"No, I-"  
  
He didn't have time to finish. He could see the pulse coming straight toward his suit and he dove to the ground to avoid it. He whipped out his submachine gun and emptied it quite quickly trying to block the invader's weapons, but to no avail. He could see its glimmering armor come upon the suit like a god, and when he tried to send it a hailing burst, it replied with a squeeze of its largest gun's trigger. Quatre could see the pale blue blast get gradually brighter and more intense as it zeroed in on the torso of Sandrock and a single tear rolled down his ghost-white cheek. He tensed up on Sandrock's joystick and uttered his soft, self-eulogy.   
  
"Don't fail me now, Sandrock. Our time is up, but not mortally."  
  
The shrapnel dug into his arm and gouts of blood sprouted forth and spattered on the dimming, flickering screen. Static intercepted his comm and he could feel his eyelids getting heavy. Another blast penetrated Sandrock's monocoque frame and exposed Quatre to the open air. His clothes were stained with blood and torn from the fragments of glass and burning metal that had sliced through him. His soul was unbroken though, as he faced his attacker defiantly and screamed his last words.   
  
"Damn you! Damn you straight to hell! You fucking new model. You don't deserve to live, you bastard! You don't deserve to live!"  
  
The pulse was too bright for him this time. Blasts of air from the barrel fanned his tattered shirt and knocked Quatre back into his deathbed, the harsh chair of his inevitable doom.  
  
  
Duo sync-zoomed in on the small piece of metal that Hilde had targeted with her resonance analyzers and took a good look at it with the scope on. He didn't detect anything out of the ordinary. Just another piece of Gundam-trashed gobbledy-gook left for the roaches to eat after a tiresome fight.   
  
"It's probably just what's left of some defense platform erected by the civilians. I don't think we have their metal on ar- Mary, mother of God."  
  
Duo halted mid-syllable and stared wide-eyed and longingly at the data before him. Hilde's sensors had determined that the seemingly civilian fragment of metal was in reality a charred chunk of gundanium.  
  
"Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. No, this can't be happening." Duo cursed to himself.  
  
He nudged his control stick and turned to see the sight Hilde was hinting toward: the flaming hulk of Sandrock, charred craters around what was left of the suit. The leg sockets were raining sparks onto the harsh, beaten ground and held pieces of half-melted gundanium close within them as if Quatre had unknowingly stepped on a mine or triggered a trap that shot his legs off. All exterior sound was cut off from Duo's brain as he was forced in horror to view the scene before him. The flashes from the explosions around him as the Maguanacs were fending off the Serpents reflected off what was left of Sandrock's shiny gundanium plating, intermittently pausing before the next one came about, all eventually slowing as Duo's senses were jammed with shock. He noticed the cockpit area around the torso. It had been completely blown apart. It was shot to the extent that the monocoque frame was revealed and people seldom saw that unless they were witnessing the construction of a Gundam. No cockpit meant no Quatre. Duo choked back tears as he surveyed the blond boy's harsh deathbed with regret that he hadn't stuck close to him.   
  
"Duo, word's come in that Chang's death has been substantiated. They said the force of the new model was too powerful. It just came from nowhere and, and…"  
  
Hilde's voice too was racked with sobs at the KIA informal of yet another friend. Duo couldn't stand it anymore. He let the tears flow from his eyes at the pain of losing a fellow pilot. And not just a pilot. Duo regarded Chang as more of a brother to him, a visage to accompany on the battlefield. Cascading from his deep eyes, the pearl tears left streaks of cleanliness behind on his dust covered leather jacket, just like the streaks of blood that penetrated his emotions as he viewed the smoking hole in Sandrock's torso. He could imagine the emotion within Chang as he faced death. Knowing that boy, Duo guessed that he had tried to fight it and lost.   
  
"God dammit, that stupid piece shit! When I find that new model I'm gonna tear his ass off and eat it for my god-damned supper! That piece of shit, that fucking piece of shit!"  
  
Every word rolled off of Duo's tongue with a harsh, cruel tone to it. Each syllable was more intense than the last. Hilde was shocked by the occurrences of the day and felt the same emotion that Duo did, but Duo didn't even speak. He was petrified to hear that their scrapyard was to have two more apparitions that day. Shinigami, the great destroyer, weeping over his lost compatriots. Every tear seemed to intensify his sadness.   



End file.
